43
Minority teacher recruitment in Youngstown district poses challenges
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Everyone agrees that having more minority teachers in the city schools is a good idea.
The problem is recruiting them.
Of the district’s 525 teachers, 47 are black, four are Asian and eight are Hispanic. The remaining 466 are white.
It’s the opposite for the student body.
About 65 percent of the city school district’s students are black, 0.15 percent are Asian, 14 percent are Hispanic and 15 percent are white.
Some school-board and academic-distress commission members have urged the administration to step up efforts to recruit minority teachers.
Karen Green, assistant superintendent for human resources, said recently that Youngstown is competing with other urban schools for the same candidates.
“We all have the same need,” she said.
The same candidate that Youngstown Schools offer a job to has fielded offers from other urban districts, too, Green said.
Part of the problem is the low number of black students entering the profession.
“Some universities have only three African-Americans in the education classes,” Green said.
Over the past three semesters, only 3.5 percent of the graduates from Youngstown State University’s Beeghly College of Education have been minorities.
Dean Charles Howell said many factors contribute.
“I think the students of color who attend YSU have smaller numbers attracted to the teaching program,” he said. “I also think sometimes students of color have not experienced, overall, a positive environment in their own education, and that may influence their choice of programs.”
The lack of blacks and other minorities in the teaching profession is a national problem, Howell said.
The National Center for Education Statistics reported that in 2011, 83 percent of teachers and 93 percent of Ohio’s teachers were white.
The Beeghly College is working to recruit more, reaching out to form future-educators clubs at both Youngstown East High School and Warren G. Harding High School in Warren, he said.
“It’s very important for students to see teachers who look like them,” Howell said, adding that the life experience is different for many minorities.
Because a person is a minority doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that they come from an urban background.
It’s not just a race thing, he said.
“No matter your background, if you inquire and open yourself, you can develop your cultural competency,” the dean said.
Teachers from an urban background, regardless of race, have an easier time developing ties to urban communities where they teach, he said.